Tripmaster
by whipplefilter
Summary: All cars die alone. That's just the way it is. [How to cope with grief in the desert.]


All cars die alone. That's just the way it is.

Maybe your engine blows, or your battery dies. Maybe it's something less dramatic–you're getting your suspension replaced, and the mechanic leaves the garage but you're not ready. Maybe you're in the desert, and something breaks. Timing belt? And you're alone.

You can't move.

But see, you're a car. You are motion. You are an assemblage of parts and you are meant to move and your engine is meant to pump and your fluids are meant to run and you're supposed to move through your gears and generate kinetic, electric, everything heat–you are a machine and you are a spirit and if you are not that machine, if you are not that system existing in that car-ish way of yours, then your spirit cannot stay.

If you are alone, then no one can call for help. There is nothing to remind you what you are, and your spirit unmoors. Give it enough time, and it leaves.

Your parts can be replaced, and your body repaired. But your spirit is a delicate thing, and if it loses the pulse of your machine-ness, then it departs.

And so do you.

* * *

That was always the threat, back in the war. Sarge remembers the POW camp, and marching through the jungle to get there. The hot breath of it as the humidity ate at their canvas and surely other, deeper things besides. It wasn't uncommon to overheat, or flood.

 _We will march you until you break,_ their captors threatened.

 _Then we will leave you. And you will die alone._

There are days when the memory hurts as much as the death march had. On these days, Sarge separates. He becomes one young soldier in the jungle and an old one in the desert. He folds all his fear and pain into this young Jeep and he abandons this younger self in time. He leaves his anger in another version of himself, patrolling the halls of the VA past door after door of broken promises and robberies of war.

He leaves his happiness sometimes, in a frozen version of himself he'd give the world to never have to leave like that: A Sarge full of laughter and precious memories. But these memories he cannot take with him without also taking memories of death, and so he abandons them too. Perhaps it's better this way, though. The pain he leaves behind should have something bright to keep it company.

Sarge closes his eyes and he accepts that sometimes the only way to live through pain is to desert it. Cover its grave.

Pain isn't supposed to happen here, though. Not now. Not in Radiator Springs.

But here he is at a funeral in the desert.

He pushes sand over the grave, just like everyone else.

He buries his best friend.

* * *

It wasn't supposed to be Fillmore.

Lizzie will probably live forever, but he, and Doc, and Sheriff–they each had some sense of their own mortality.

Sarge had 20 years on Fillmore. He was never supposed to be the one to bury him.

Sarge stands sentry above Willy's Canyon, staring out at Willy's Butte as the sun comes down over it. It goes warm red, purple. Catches fire with a spirit all its own.

He thinks, Fillmore likes bonfires.

Maybe in some past, with some cautiously jubilant Sarge (whom Sarge must leave now, must bury with all the rest), Fillmore still does.

Maybe he still does.

* * *

It's 2011, when Fillmore dies. In a few months, Sarge will turn 70. (Fillmore never will.)

Lightning just turned five. Sarge doesn't remember what it was like to be that young; it's possible he never was. By five, Sarge had seen a World War won and many, many lives lost.

Lightning's never even thought about death before. He's acting like he just rolled off the line.

"Why was he out in the desert?" Lightning asks, brow furrowed and heart broken. "Why was he alone? What did he say to you? Did he tell you?"

The question Lightning really wants to ask is _Why is Fillmore gone?_ but he's at least old enough to know that there is no good answer to that one. There never is.

Truthfully, if Radiator Springs knew why Fillmore had been out in the desert alone like that, it would destroy them. They might never recover.

"Are you annoyed with all these questions?" Lightning asks, when Sarge stays silent.

"We had a fight," Sarge answers truthfully, even as he knows he shouldn't.

They'd had a fight, and that's why Fillmore had gone out to the desert. That's why he'd wanted to be alone. Why no one had been able to find him in time.

"It's my fault," says Sarge.

"No, it's not," says Lightning.

It is, though. Lightning means to be kind but the only reason his insistence comes so quick and so urgent is because it it is any other way, Radiator Springs could not hope to handle it. The town is made of gentler things than truth. And so, it can't be anyone's fault their friend is gone. The world could never be that dark.

But Sarge is not five. He is not fifty. He remembers the Bataans and the Koreas and so very many horrible things this one sweet town could never dream. And it's his fault that Fillmore is dead.

* * *

In his dream, Sarge drowns in a vortex of water. Then he's awake in the sky, high above the canyons. His vision is crosshairs–he's a bomber. No, surveillance. He's an aircraft. He's flying high above the canyons, red gray orange, and in his head, Fillmore corrects, "it's more of an ombre burnt sienna, wouldn't you say?"

He is looking for Fillmore.

More to the point, he is finding him.

Sarge could have found him, if he'd taken to the sky. If he'd been born a plane, none of this would have happened. He could have saved his friend.

It's his fault.

He should have been born a plane.

* * *

Every night, Sarge dreams of flight.

* * *

It's his fault.

* * *

Imagine him, in the desert alone. He has to know he will die; Fillmore's always been very attuned to such things. He's seen drugs rip spirits from bodies; he's seen rust do it, too–poverty. Bullets. Fillmore knew death, perhaps even better than Sarge. (Sarge, who splits it away from him. Locks it away until it comes howling back, scraping at his door. It's what they'd fought about, that day.)

He's in the desert, alone.

Sarge can't imagine any more than that. he He can't imagine Fillmore's last words, last thoughts. What peace he'd made during his last few moments, under the sun and moon in the desert. All Sarge can think about is he was alone.

He was alone.

He was alone.

He was alone.

 _–and we will leave you here to die._

Fillmore died alone.

* * *

Sally's headed to the county seat. She has to file the death certificate.

"Whoa, alone?!" Lightning's panic is evident.

Sally starts to cry.

Sally doesn't want to think about it. She doesn't want to be afraid. She wasn't want to remember that Fillmore is gone and it's the desert–their desert!–that took him, even though her errand is his death certificate and that means of course she has to think about it. She's like Sarge in that way; she needs to be apart from the reality of that. Just for now. Just to keep her head above the sorrow.

Lightning's not like that at all.

This is something the two of them probably cannot understand, but they're not good for each other in this moment. Probably neither of them want to think about that, either. It feels like everything is falling apart.

"Stanley and I were never married, you know," Lizzie says out of the blue, or maybe not. It's hard to tell with her. Sometimes it feels like stories get knocked out of here like they're dominoes in a line.

It shouldn't matter. Married, not married. Here's the town and there is Stanley's statue, which Lizzie loves so much. But today it feels sad, and it feels like everything falling apart.

Because Radiator Springs is meant to be happy and its founding myths are of romance, of passion, and bliss. But Fillmore is dead and under that cloud, even the small things feel like a miracle tumbling down. Turning to dust.

Sally does not go to the county seat.

* * *

Sometimes when Sarge dreams that he is flying, his engine stalls. He spirals down and down and down.

As he falls he thinks, this is unforgivably sad. He is going to die, and Fillmore is going to die, and the whole town–this will destroy them.

This is all so unforgivably sad.

Then he wakes up. He's not dead.

He is still unforgivably sad.

* * *

Maybe one day, Sarge will wake up and the town will wake up and there will be a rhythm to their lives again. This is probably true. But it's not true today, and when Sarge wakes up he's sucked into a sea of overwhelming dread. Not that there's anything to confront today but its emptiness. It's just so, so impossible to think realistically about a comfortable future because today is not fine, today is not good. Tomorrow won't be either. And that feeling is inescapable.

Today, it does not matter if _it's going to be okay_ or not.

'Going to be' won't buy you nothing.

Today, this pain is endless. The logic of time, the future, eventualities–none of it matters. Loss does not care about logic.

So Sarge drives out to the desert. Sarge drives to the place where they'd found him. Where they'd found his body. It's just a stretch of dirt like any other, somewhat off the road. Maybe it had been a good place for stargazing, or sunset contemplation. To Fillmore, one night, some weeks ago, it had been a nice place. It had been a place he'd wanted to be. Now, of course, it's haunted.

Sarge is certain it had not been where Fillmore had wanted to die.

* * *

Sarge is not alone.

When he leaves, due east, Radiator Springs follows. Together they cast long shadows down the road, one meeting the next until they form a jagged, spindly crack of shadow that stretches from town to the place–that place–and together they live in their grief, which cannot be outrun it cannot be skipped over it cannot drift gently away from its dock.

Maybe one day, this will pass. Tonight, that future does not matter.

* * *

When Sarge dreams that night, he is flying.

* * *

 **Prompt:** _what if fillmore died or was killed by something after getting into a really terrible close to friendship ending argument that leaves everyone feeling horrible after with sarge before the two could make up? how did fillmore die? how does sarge cope with the grief of losing his very best friend?does he feel like it was his fault even if there was nothing to do to control it? did he have any regrets? how does everyone else react? what were fillmore's last words? how did the funeral go?_


End file.
